"Alright, 'Beastketeer.' What are you all here for?" I asked Phobio once we were all in a conference room.
"And why would I bother replying to a wimpy-" BAM! Phobio tried to act all big and important, with his three troops backing him up, but the dude was only at the level of Benimaru or so. Enough to be smug around normal low-level magic-born, but he couldn't even resist the paralysis that Risa pumped into his system for a moment, causing him to bang his head on the table before she pulled it back.
"Look, man. I may be a slime, but not only are you one of the weakest people in this room, but I also control thirty percent of the Great Forest of Jura. Are you really willing to make an enemy of me?"
"Ha! Look at that, the most self-important slime-" BAM! He was cut off by Risa temporarily paralyzing him again.
"Don't let it go to your head, just because Lady Milim likes you, boy." Despite what he said, though, Phobio did talk. Essentially, he'd been ordered by Lord Carillon to scout out either me or the orc lord, whichever had survived. Milim had mentioned something to Risa about Carillon being at the little 'party' Demon Lord Clayman had organized to watch the Orc Lord fight, anyways.
Carillon had figured that whichever majin survived would be a sub-demon lord in its own right, so he sent Phobio to check it out and hopefully recruit me. Too bad he was so stupid, though.
Honestly, though, it was a big faux pas either way on Carillon's part. The demon lords who'd known about the Orc Lord thing had all agreed, on Milim's request, to not interfere with each other's efforts, and Phobio's attempted subjugation of the town would've ruined Milim's fun, had he not been so stupid and/or weak.
Anyways, since Phobio's mission was a roaring failure, I decided to just send him on his way with a message for Carillon, telling him to contact me later if he wanted to negotiate. I didn't actually expect Phobio to deliver that message, but whatever.
…
Fuze rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes as he looked over the intelligence reports for what seemed like the ten thousandth time.
It all started with Kabal's party's second report, the one on the area around Veldora's cave. He'd had an old friend, Shizu, go with them to protect them. He'd considered overkill at the time, but Shizu was going the same way anyways, so it'd worked out.
Until the fire spirit inside of her had apparently gone rampant. The result? Shizu died, something that she'd been expecting for a while, but it was still sad. As for Kabal's party, they'd been protected by two slimes, who were apparently building a town in the forest. Full recovery potions, three full arrays of adventuring gear on par with or better than what they made in Dwargon, and information about monsters capable of defeating a Superior Spirit.
Then, only a few days after Kabal came back with their report, a hobgoblin showed up at the guild headquarters, looking for them.
Apparently, this hobgoblin's name was Gobto, He was a member of Mr. Rimuru Tempest's Goblin Riders, under his general, Gobta.
Basically, this 'Rimuru' had sent Gobto to look for Kabal and his group to inform them that an Orc Lord had appeared in the forest of Jura.
As Gobto put it, Rimuru's forces were heading out to engage the orc lord. However, if he couldn't, then he wanted to have the humans deal with it. Decidedly non-monsterlike thinking. And the big kicker was that the four people in the room who'd actually met Rimuru all agreed that he and some Risa girl wouldn't have a single problem defeating the orc lord when it came down to it.
Later, Fuze would learn that Rimuru and his forces actually did manage to defeat the orc lord. Along with an army of over 200,000. And the remaining orcs in the army did not riot across the land, but rather, they all evolved and settled down peacefully.
Then, yesterday, while finalizing his plans to journey to the monster town and see it for himself, alongside Kabal's party, he'd been approached in a secure room inside the Free Guild Blummund headquarters by a blue-haired monster with a single, glossy white horn protruding from his forehead.
This intruder chilled Fuze to the bone just by being there, but he was only there to relay a simple message from 'Sir' Rimuru. "The orc lord issue has been resolved. Sorry I forgot to tell you guys!"
Fuze did manage to learn about a flaw in Blummund's barrier system from the intruder before he vanished, as well as delve a bit into Rimuru's ideals, when it came to human interaction, but it still rattled him quite a bit, a monster that could conceivably be awarded a Calamity rating entering the city simply by splitting his power up a bit.
…
"How did you manage to survive this long, being so irresponsible?! I mean, come on, with all of this dangerous crap and utter nonsense!" Fuze shouted, running from a giant spider with an exoskeleton harder than steel. This was a knight spider, an A-minus threat.
Luckily, or perhaps not, Kabal's party weren't the only ones in the path of the Knight Spider's rage.
"Dammit! You're gonna pay for dragging us into this! Rommel, strengthening magic! Everyone else, form a circle! Anyone gets hurt, switch 'em out. Nobody dies, got it!?" Yohm, the leader of a party from Farmus sent to investigate the orc lord, shouted.
The knight spider shrugged everything off. Confident in his strength as he was, Yohm found that nothing that he did was effective in the least. No spells worked against the knight spider's tough exoskeleton, either.
It was only a matter of time before they all faltered.
"Yo, Kabal. Dude, why is it that every time I see you, you're fighting some sort of monster?"
And then, a ray of sunshine appeared. Five goblins, each riding wolf-type creatures.
"Whoa, Gobta! Damn, man! Don't just sit there like an ass, help us! We're running out of time!" Kabal called out to the hobgoblin who'd addressed him. This 'Gobta' was riding a wolf that very clearly seemed head and shoulders above the rest.
"A'ight. Wait, is that a Knight Spider? Guys, Lady Risa's been looking everywhere for one'a these!"
"What-?! Gobto, is that you?! Get over here and take my place!" Fuze shouted, barely dodging one of the Knight Spider's legs, as the spider tossed Kabal backwards like a rag doll.
"Gobchi!" Gobta tossed something to his eyepatched assistant. The end of something that looked like a rope. "Rango, tie it up. I'll distract it." And with that, Gobta pulled his sword out and dismounted his starwolf.
"Freeze. Blast." The first thing Gobta did was point his sword at the Knight Spider's face and say two words. With his first word, the air around his sword instantly turned into fog, frost building up on the blade. Then, he fired a bolt of freezing cold energy at the spider.
Naturally, an A-minus threat wouldn't be stopped by a single magical bolt from the likes of Gobta, though. Instead, a thin layer of ice appeared on the spider's outer shell. Likely painful, but just enough to make the spider focus on Gobta.
"Dodge!" He shouted. After that, his body jerked backward, seemingly against his will, in response to three of the spider's legs suddenly ripping through where his body had been.
After that, the battle was pretty easy for the goblins. Not really much of a battle at all, just Gobta running around, making a fool of the spider while Rango ran around with a rope. By the end, when they pulled Rango's rope taut, they had a Knight Spider that was trussed up like a turkey.
"Paralyze. Blast four." And with four blasts from Gobta's sword, the spider stopped moving.